Heinkel He 111: An Illustrated History. Design - Development - Variants - Operations - Equipment

[edwest]

http://www.christian-schmidt.com/pro...oducts_id=9181





Usual disclaimer,
Ed

[Jukka Juutinen]

Since the book seems to be available, I wonder if any TOCH members have it already? I definitely hope that the book has plenty of engineering and handling info.

[ChrisS]

I can't believe Classic would try to cram into one book the history of this aircraft. To make a good history of this important aircraft 5 books of this size would be required. Very sadly IMHO another potboiler just like the, at best, mediocre Fw 200 book. The best thing that can be said is that the standard of production is very good.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by ChrisS

I can't believe Classic would try to cram into one book the history of this aircraft.

Publishing is a business. It's a matter of what the owner of the Classic name — Ian Allen when the book was planned — was willing to commission, based on what they thought would sell. I can quite understand why you would like a multi-volume history of the He 111 but (a) somebody would have to spend years writing it and (b) someone would have to risk a lot of money to publish it. I don't know how you feel but I wouldn't gamble my own money on that scale so I can hardly be too critical if other people won't either.

[ChrisS]

It's a good argument Nick but they managed it with the excellent Me 262 and Fw 190 series, I can't believe these volumes didn't make money... Ok I know the He 111 is perhaps not as 'sexy' but this volume is very disappointing.

[Jukka Juutinen]

Nick, publishing is business, however, that is no explanation to everything. I have not seen this book yet, but, from the comments expressed so far it seems that the subtitle of the book is very much misleading. As the subtitle is Design - Development - Variants - Operations - Equipment, one would well expect the contents to be approx. equally shared. Yet, apparently the technical side is very skimpy and the vast majority is devoted to operations. And here it went south.

If the publisher assessed that e.g. a 5-volume set is not feasible, then what was needed is called priorization. There is an old military maxim "if you defend everything, you do not defend anything". In other words, one should have never, NEVER, attempted to cover everything within a single volume of 336 pages. Instead, there should have been a clear focus, and that focus should have been what has not been covered in any substantial detail before: design and development. Thus the book should have been "He 111 - An Illustrated Study: Design and Development".

The coverage should have focused entirely on He 111's design and development emphasizing engineering and piloting PoV with analyses on manufacturing, testing, aerodynamics, systems, handling and performance. I.e. something similar to Christoph Vernaleken's Ju 388 book. And in this 336 pages would have allowed significant detail.

The situation with WW2 aircraft monographs in general is exceedingly annoying for those more technically minded readers. For some unfathomable reason, vacuum cleaner (aka jet) enthusiasts are provided with books that have great engineering detail and analysis, but piston aircraft enthusiasts are treated like Dummköpfe: simplistic text devoid of technical analysis coupled with plenty of nice photos and maximum amount of colour (te none of the colour is used for e.g. fuel system schematics). In Luftwaffe case, one does only need to compare books on the Me 262, He 162, Me 163 to books on any LW piston aircraft.

[ChrisS]

It's a good argument Nick but they managed it with the excellent Me 262 and Fw 190 series, I can't believe these volumes didn't make money... Ok I know the He 111 is perhaps not as 'sexy' but this volume is very disappointing in comparison. I agree totally with Jukka the title is too expansive: the book should have concentrated on one of the aspects and done it very well rather than poorly for all sections. I gave up reading it because it was too lightweight in the sections of my interest.

[Jukka Juutinen]

Forgot to mention that shouldn't Classic (or other British publishers) perhaps consider co-operating with native German authors when doing books on German aircraft? After all, it would be quite perverse to have the best known Spitfire or Lancaster book to be written by German authors...

[Dénes Bernád]

Originally Posted by Jukka Juutinen

Forgot to mention that shouldn't Classic (or other British publishers) perhaps consider co-operating with native German authors when doing books on German aircraft? After all, it would be quite perverse to have the best known Spitfire or Lancaster book to be written by German authors...

I don't agree with this line of thinking at all. What matters is the end result, i.e. the book itself, not the Author's nationality, or citizenship.

For example, recently a monography of the German aircraft Henschel Hs 129 has been published by the German publisher Unitec Medienvertrieb, in their Flugzeug Profile series (No. 54), by German author Manfred Franzke, which turns out to be a disgrace.
The content "closely follows" (i.e., copied) my own book on the same aircraft type, the majority of the photos are the same (in several cases even the so-called Moiré lines that show due to poor quality scanning of printed photos are visible! The "author" even published my own detailed table on the overall Hs 129 production I worked on so hard for so long, without giving the source, of course. What a shame...

[Rasmussen]

But Manfred Franzke and the Flugzeug Profiles aren't the standard, it's the press for absolut beginners ... in Germany you buy if you haven't any other ideas.